Monday, January 28, 2013

Today's image is a start and finish sort of thing. The subjects were shot using a Westcott X-drop
Backdrop with a white backdrop cloth.The X-drop is one of the most portable, easy to use, location setups
I've ever used.The subject is an
outdoorsman and was looking for a shot with his trusty hiking companion in an
outdoor setting.There wasn't time to
drive to some idyllic setting as the need for the image was about eighteen
hours from phone call to publishing the shot.The day I shot the stream behind the team was a bitterly cold fall day
last year, so he well may have worn the jacket, sweater and shirt you see him
in.It was cold!!!!Could the shot have been done "in
camera"? Sure, given the time, the
distance and the gas money to get up and back the two hundred miles.Unfortunately, we had none of those
options.To find out about the options
we did have a the setup I used, hit the "Read More".

We meet at the hall I knew I could get access to.By the time the subject arrived I had everything
setup.In addition to the #Westcott
X-drop it was a four light arrangement.The main light was a Beauty Dish set directly over the camera
position.A light on either side and a
single light on the X-drop.All were
Nikon speedlights.The two side lights
were through fairly tight grids pointed just to the front of ninety
degrees.Two groups were used and the
whole mess triggered using the Nikon CLS (Creative Lighting System.Talk about down and dirty.

Thursday, January 24, 2013

I was out the other night judging a competition at a local
camera club.I've done it a couple times
a year for the past several years.It's
typically a fun night and we (the other two judges and I) usually get into some
good natured wisecracking along with serious the constructive critiques.The people in the leadership of the clubs
tend to say they like the lighter atmosphere.Some people who judge are just too dour for my taste.The club I was at last week is one I'm often
asked to as a judge.It seems every time
I go I ask the members to put a vignette on their images.To have a beautiful image or print where the
color just slides off the edges just makes me nuts.It may come for when I first started out in
photography.It was at a camera
club.The more experienced members would
really get on my case if a print didn't have a very subtle vignette on it.Today's image shows different degrees of
vignettes.To find out which one was
used on the final image (on the right), hit the "Read More".

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

It's sharp!In the last post I talked about calibrating my 18 - 200mm lens to my camera body.Take a look.Enlarge the shot (click on it).Check it out.You can see the
difference in a controlled environment (taking a shot of a Logitech webcam
sitting on top of my monitor) using a flash to take camera shake out of the
equation.But, and it's a big but (only
one "t"), how would it work in a real world situation?Today's image is the final version of my
testing.For some tips on what to look
for, hit the "Read More".

Friday, January 18, 2013

Like I said, I knew I wasn't crazy (or maybe any crazier
than friends already thought).Ever since I
bought a Nikkor 18 - 200mm lens several years ago I've thought it had a focus
problem.This morning I finally decided
to do something about it.I'd gotten a

Spyder Lenscal (tm) device from B&H last summer, but have been too busy
with other things to set it up and see what the focus was on the lens.What a dope.I could have saved myself a lot of fighting with images.After completing the AF Fine Tune adjustment
on my Nikon D300 I had to try "something" that wasn't a Lenscal target.I was sitting in the office and looked around
for anything I could sample to check focus.I popped up the flash and shot the little Logitech webcam on top of the
monitor.It was good as anything else
that was "up close".The lens
was racked out to 200mm.Flash on TTL
(hence the highlight).The top shot was
with the settings I thought gave the best focus.I was shooting tethered, using Adobe
Photoshop Lightroom 4 (LR4), so I had two images I could instantly study.One on each screen.One, the whole image and the other a
magnified view.The "adjusted"
focus looked pretty good, but pretty good compared to what?To find out, hit the "Read More".

Monday, January 14, 2013

Today's image really doesn't have anything to do with the
topic of today's post.It's there more
for eye candy to possibly attract someone to the Gallery.For the past four or five years I've been
teaching Adobe Photoshop Elements (PSE) in the evenings for an adult continuing
education department in the next town over.For the first couple years I'd try to teach the group all sorts of neat
tips and tricks that would make their images sing.More and more it became apparent that 1) the "tricks"
were beyond the "students" level of knowledge and 2) they were more
interested in cropping, sharpening and auto retouching their images.Not doing tricks with them.There were the occasional
"interesting" problems that a person would ask about.One was a woman who's only purpose in taking
the class was restoring images that had a blown out center.She's an artist and would have the problem
when shooting her paintings and sculptures.I finally asked if I could go to
her studio and look at the problem firsthand.I asked her to shoot one of her paintings.She put the painting on an easel, her camera
on a tripod with the lens perpendicular to the painting.So far so good.She hit the shutter, the flash popped up and
flashed the shot.She asked me to look
at the screen on the back of the camera and said "see, this is exactly
what I get".I explained that she
didn't have a "photoshop" problem.I told he to put the camera on Program rather than Auto and the problem
would go away.The whole trick was to
keep the flash from popping up and giving her a big light splash in the middle
of her paintings.It wasn't silly things
like that that made me decide to end teaching PSE.To find out what drove me to stop, hit the
"Read More".

Friday, January 4, 2013

Today's image is a combination of a couple different "styles"
that are somewhat popular in a few Photoshop (Adobe Photoshop CS6) circles.The OOB (Out of Box) type of thing is one,
where pieces of the subject extend beyond the edges of a pseudo frame. Another is using an ordinary image to create a
far out of focus background.The third
is using lightning bolts and paint splatters to add excitement and go a little
"artistic" to make a saleable image.Shoot a few of these at a motocross event, play with them, bring samples
to the next event and the riders will be falling all over themselves throwing
money at you for prints.If you decide
to try something like making sales at an event, look into using a Squareor
Payanywhere device for you smart phone.One
idea would be to take a minimal payment for doing the work (say $25.00) and
providing an online ordering mechanism.SmugMug or a similar service would be the way to control the final
order fulfillment process.One of the
big caveats I'd suggest would be switching up the background for each rider
based on the colors of the bike or riders suit.These guys are a pretty close knit group and could end up at each other's
homes.It might be a little awkward to
have the same basic image up on the wall, all framed up nice and just the
riders switched out.Seems a little lazy
if you ask me.For a few more thoughts
on making this type of thing a sideline business, hit the "Read More"

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Today's image is just a little play time thing.I'd already done a B&W conversion of the
original and thought that did fairly well.Nice black skies and lots of detail in the clouds.Almost a infrared type of thing there.It looked "good ", but really
lacked something to make it "interesting".The whole thing had been shot bracketed, hand
held, going for an exposure rather than anything for HDR.The brackets were set to 1/3 stops with a
starting point of -1/3 EV.It was a five
shot bracket, so I had -1, -2/3, -1/3 0, and +1/3 to choose from.The B&W conversion came out of the zero
shot, so that was 1/3 stop high for my "normal" shooting.The color comes from a more typical -1/3 spot
shot.To find out what I did to it and
why I like it, hit the "Read More".

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If you're looking through the blog and you see a shot that catches your fancy, it's probably for sale as a limited addition, signed and numbered print.

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